A Phone Call and a Fall
by The Lighthouse's Keeper
Summary: It all started, or, I suppose, ended, with a phone call and a fall. Three years have passed and time still hasn't healed the wound. A prequel-of-sorts to "A Broken Soldier". One shot, drabble. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade have very small background roles not majorly important to the main character role.


**Hello, there! I'm back (finally!). I have standardised tests this week, so no homework, which means more writing time! HOORAY. This is a prequel-of-sorts to "A Broken Soldier". Yes, I know I chose the most feels-possible title, I'm deeply sorry. Speaking of ABS, you guys gave me the best response I've had in a long time. I even found a fan during a group Kik! I'm telling you, it made me so happy I just can't even.**

**Love always,**

**The Lighthouse's Keeper**

John Watson was a busy man. The keyword is was. He had no time for sitting back and reminiscing. But John Watson's life had changed in the blink of an eye. Well, in the space of a phone call and a fall. And suddenly his world was flipped and everything he stood for and by was shaken to the core. He was left alone, horrified, angry, sad, and just a little bit hurt. He, without thinking clearly, still in a daze of shock and emotions and 'what-the-hell-just-happened's.

He found himself face to face with a door. Now this was not any door. Oh, it looked like an ordinary door, all wooden and black with a brass number and doorknob and everything, but it was the gateway to what had saved John Watson and then ultimately destroyed him. John bit back tears and fumbled with the innocent, harmless-looking key. He slipped inside the door and heard a voice call out.

"Sherlock, dear, is that you? They've made such an awful mess."

And he broke down crying. Mrs. Hudson, a kind, elderly woman who had never harmed a fly, who brought biscuits and sweets and tea, who was their- his- landlady, not housekeeper, poked her head out further. She frowned. "What's wrong? Has something happened to Sherlock? Did he get arrested?"

John looked at her for seven and a half seconds and then just held out his left hand. Dangling limply from it was a bloodstained blue scarf.

(•~•)(•v•)

Three years later, a man appeared once again on the doorstep of 221 Baker Street, London, clutching a cane tightly in his hand. He opened the door and gulped, trying to dispel the hard lump in his throat. But even that made his eyes sting hot with tears. Three years to the day, to the hour, to the very minute his life came crashing down, quite literally, he had been walking and found himself outside of St. Barts, staring at the dark stain on the concrete. He felt a tidal wave was rushing upon him, threatening to drown him, and his human instincts led him to the place he loved the most. This also happened to be a place he had been avoiding for three years.

The man walked up the creaking stairs to 221B. He pushed open the door and nearly choked when he saw that not a thing had been touched, no, he had been the last one to enter when he had gotten his things three years ago. Indeed, a jacket, one of his, was on the coatrack, right next to a faded, bloodstained blue scarf.

He walked over quietly and stroked the fabric gently. A memory came unbidden to his mind, of a man with dark, curly hair, pale skin, and sharp cheekbones, with a smile on his face, drawling on about a case, tying the scarf around his neck, at such ease with the world. As if nothing could touch him. And yet he lay in the ground, the only tribute to a great and brilliant and special man a granite headstone with his name.

The man continued, past his old room, and pausing at the doorway to a room he had never entered. He cracked the door and heard a loud, drawn out squeaking, grating noise a door acquired after a long period of no use. But before he could look in, something inside him protested. It felt all wrong to be entering a dead man's room when you hadn't seen it when he had lived.

Swallowing the desperate sobbing rising in his throat, he shut the door with a soft click and walked over to the window and gazed around at the familiar view. It was too familiar. Lestrade was climbing out of a taxi. That was all to painfully familiar and and so hellishly wrong. How did he know? Had a once proud man become so predictable? He supposed he had. But that didn't stop him as he spotted the violin. He strode over quickly and curled up around it, staring unseeing as he replayed memories of times gone by. And as he heard the creak of feet upon the stairs, John Watson mourned what had been and what could never again be.


End file.
